Kylesa

Google Kylesa, and the first thing that shows up is www.kylesa.com, with the tag line “We want to play your party.” Now, if the band were touring houses instead of clubs, it’d be like that scene from Weird Science when the post-apocalypse bikers crash through the living room, wielding barbaric weapons and leaving horrendous mud stains on the carpet. Kylesa, to say it not unkindly, can be intimidating. The act’s latest full-length, To Walk a Middle Course, is a mesh of grind and doom that calls for severe headbanging in the most embarrassing way possible. The three guitarists — Laura Pleasants, Corey Barhorst and Phillip Cope — share vocals that range from a kind of harmonized yelling to a brutal course on how to sing with a sore throat. Drummer Brandon Baltzley was apparently abducted by aliens earlier this year, and the Savannah, Georgia, natives are still in search of a permanent replacement. The band’s rigorous tour schedule hasn’t been affected by the loss, though, and neither, we hope, have their party-crashing skills.